Collective Conversations with Milo Thiesen

Product Manager, Gallery Systems

With over two decades of experience spanning art, media, technology, and museum collections, Milo Thiesen, brings a unique blend of creative vision and technical expertise to the role of Product Manager at Gallery Systems. From early work as a visual artist to leading digital asset management strategies at world-renowned institutions such as The Met, Lincoln Center, and the American Museum of Natural History, Milo has built a career at the intersection of cultural heritage and innovation.

In this conversation, Milo shares their journey into product management, insights on the future of museum technology, and the guiding principles that shape their work on TMS Collections. Along the way, they reflect on the evolving role of digital tools in exhibitions and loans, the importance of community-driven product development, and the passion for art and storytelling that continues to inspire their work every day.

Please can you tell us a bit about your museum background?

I’ve spent two decades immersed in art, film, museum collections, archives, media, and tech. I began in the world of visual storytelling as a trained artist in fine art photography and video installation. Through my experience as an artist, I discovered how much I enjoy the challenge of managing large and complex media collections. This paved the way to begin managing digital asset management (DAM) ecosystems at Airbnb, The Met, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the American Museum of Natural History. My pivot into product management came naturally—I was always designing systems, bridging cross-functional teams, and advocating for sustainable digital transformation as a Product Owner and technical analyst for DAMS. Becoming a Certified Scrum Product Owner and Product Leader just formalized the direction I was already heading in and solidified my Product sense.

Milo speaking at DAM New York in 2019.

What drew you to work at Gallery Systems?

During my time at the Met, it became clear to me that TMS is the cornerstone for collection management in museums. I saw an opportunity to help shape the future of a product that powers the most important collections around the world. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to work with inspiring leaders who I’ve admired throughout my career, and now I get to support them and grow the product together. It is truly an honor to do this work. My mission has always been to empower museum professionals, and working on the future of TMS lets me scale that impact globally.

What does a typical day look like for you as a product manager?

Most days are a blend of discovery and alignment. I spend time with our design, product, and engineering teams, but I also stay connected to clients and internal stakeholders across customer success, professional services, and sales/marketing. A lot of my energy goes into ensuring we’re solving the right problems—not just shipping features but building value and measuring our outcomes. I stay up to date on standards and emerging trends in museums, so I spend a lot of personal time reading articles, diving into technical docs on the latest metadata standards, and staying current on how AI is impacting technology and the cultural heritage sectors specifically.

What’s one part of your role you find particularly rewarding or challenging?

I find it deeply rewarding to translate real-world museum problems into elegant technical solutions. The challenge? Working within our long-time clients’ complex and highly configured systems while also pushing the product toward a more future-ready, interoperable, and user-centric design driven direction.

What do you love most about Gallery Systems’ company culture, and how does it influence the work you do?

It’s incredibly rare to be surrounded by people who not only care about technology but also have deep domain expertise in museum work. There’s a shared sense of purpose that makes collaboration easier—and more meaningful. Almost everyone at Gallery Systems has had a career as a museum professional who used and/or administrated TMS. This gives us deep insight into the challenges that our institutions face and how we can facilitate the level of depth needed to describe, catalog, and safeguard the collections and empower Collection Information programs across the world.

What’s one recent feature or improvement you’re especially proud of?

The new Archives feature is my favorite so far. I’ve worked on other archival systems in the past and it’s been really fun to find a way to implement aggregate search and shared vocabularies to significantly reduce duplicative data entry and eliminate the need for maintaining complex integrations between systems. Aggregate search across Collection Objects and Archive Objects is a reality in TMS Collections now, our value proposition is strong in that our system can support unified search, conservation, and media management.

In a less flashy way, we have balanced a focus on performance optimizations and scalability for our largest clients (100s of millions of records), with UX wins that support and add value to all our users, especially those in smaller or less resourced institutions. I’m proud of the fact that we can provide solutions for SMBs and Enterprise customers alike.

What do you believe sets Gallery Systems apart in the field of museum technology?

Gallery Systems stands out because we’re not just a software company—we’re part of the museum community. Many of us, myself included, come from institutions that use TMS daily. That insider knowledge means we don’t treat our clients as users—we treat them as peers. We understand the stakes of cultural stewardship, the complexity of legacy data, and the very real pressures of limited resources and shifting mandates.

What truly sets us apart is our level of depth for description and tracking and our dedication to configurability without compromise. We build powerful, deeply customizable tools that can adapt to each institution’s unique workflows, while still supporting data standards and long-term interoperability.

We also take longevity seriously. Museums think in decades and centuries—not only in fiscal quarters. Our technology reflects that kind of thoughtful, sustainable innovation. We are well versed in shiny trends in technology, but we don’t chase them. We carefully research emergent technical capabilities like GenAI, Agentic Workflows, and MCP, but we only jump when the value and impact is undeniable for our community —we’re building tools that last, scale, and evolve alongside our clients.

And finally, our commitment to relationships. Whether it’s with our clients, partners, or each other, we lead with care, listening closely and iterating with intention. That human-centered approach makes all the difference.

How do you approach gathering feedback and incorporating it into the roadmap?

At Gallery Systems, we believe the best products are built in partnership with the people who use them every day. That’s why listening is at the core of everything we do.

We gather feedback through a variety of touchpoints: our dedicated product feedback platform, our growing online Community, direct conversations during virtual and on-site visits, insights from support tickets, and input received through RFPs. These channels give us a constant, real-time understanding of what matters most to our clients.

We use structured tools like Jira Product Discovery with RICE scoring, SWOT analysis, and additional prioritization frameworks to turn that feedback into clear, data driven, and actionable roadmap priorities. We also work closely with our implementation and data migration teams to ensure enhancements support real-world workflows and smooth client onboarding.

We’re committed to achieving and exceeding feature parity with TMS for Windows, and we maintain a continually prioritized list of opportunities based on effort, value, impact, and risk. This ensures we’re not just catching up—we’re building forward, with intention.

By blending community-driven insights with strategic evaluation and market awareness, we ensure that TMS evolves in ways that are meaningful, measurable, and museum-focused.

Where do you see the product heading over the next year or two?

TMS Collections is rapidly evolving into a smarter, more flexible, and future-ready platform—while staying grounded in the deep functionality that museums have trusted for decades.

Over the next two years, we’re focused on delivering:

• AI-driven capabilities for smarter data ingest, user experience optimization, rapid prototyping, and real-time validation with user groups—bringing innovation directly into client feedback sessions and day-to-day workflows.
• Full feature parity with TMS for Windows across all major areas of functionality, ensuring a seamless and confident transition for long-time users.
• Expanded support for overlapping commitments, giving institutions more powerful and precise tools for managing loans, exhibitions, and internal movements.
• New reporting tools designed to bring the best in reporting to our users will coexist with our legacy offerings, creating a smooth bridge into the future of analytics while respecting past investments.
• Expanded public APIs for integration and automation at scale.
• Conversational AI features for easier access to complex data.
• Expanded Multilingual capabilities to better serve our global client base.

We’re also developing all AI features with a strong ethical framework in mind: data privacy, opt-out controls, carbon impact awareness, and value-for-cost analysis are central to our approach. We’re not chasing trends—we’re building tools with integrity, longevity, and empathy.

The future of TMS is one where innovation meets institutional trust—empowering museum professionals to do their best work, every day.

Milo presenting at Collective Imagination 2025.

Are there any trends in the industry you’re excited about or keeping a close eye on?

Absolutely—this is an incredibly exciting moment for museum technology. We’re seeing rapid advances in AI and predictive analytics, which are already transforming how we clean, structure, and interact with collection data. These tools have the potential to reduce manual workload and surface insights that were previously buried in complexity.

I’m also closely following usability and design trends that prioritize clarity, accessibility, and delight. The museum professionals we serve deserve tools that are not only powerful but also intuitive and joyful to use.

Equally exciting are new modes of interaction with complex data—from faceted search and graph visualizations to conversational interfaces. These innovations make it easier to ask better questions and uncover connections across collections.

I’m a big supporter of standards like CIDOC CRM and EODEM, and I’m passionate about pushing the boundaries of what’s possible when systems are truly interoperable. These frameworks help ensure that museum data isn’t locked in—it’s portable, sharable, and future-proof.

The future is here, and it’s bright. We’re building toward a world where cultural heritage professionals can spend less time wrestling with systems and more time doing what they do best: preserving, interpreting, and sharing the world’s stories.

What’s one thing people might be surprised to learn about your role?

People often assume product management is about coming up with features—but in reality, it’s more like planning a major exhibition.

Just like curators balance space, time, conservation needs, and public impact, I’m constantly weighing tradeoffs—technical complexity, user value, implementation timing, and long-term strategy. I have to decide what goes into this “exhibition” (or release), what needs to stay in storage for now, and what requires more research before it’s ready to be seen.

There’s also a huge trust-building component. Product managers act as a bridge between different teams—users, developers, designers, customer support—and we have to earn everyone’s trust by showing that we’re listening, making informed decisions, and advocating for what matters most.

Ultimately, my job isn’t to have all the answers. It’s to create alignment, prioritize what delivers the most impact, and ensure we’re telling a coherent story—just like a well-curated exhibit that resonates with its audience.

What inspires or motivates you most in your work?

I just genuinely love art. It’s humbling to play even a small part in building a system that holds so much of our shared human history. TMS isn’t just software—it’s a framework that helps facilitate the iterative discovery and rediscovery of truth and identity, whether through visual culture or scientific knowledge.

As someone who spent years managing media and using these systems firsthand, I find deep fulfillment in making things better for the next person. When I can help improve a workflow, make a task more intuitive, or solve a long-standing problem—that moment of clarity and ease fuels the more technical side of me.

When I was three, I told people I wanted to be a “robot fixer,” and later I became an artist. Product management in museum tech feels like the perfect fusion of both paths. I get to solve complex problems and support the people who shape and preserve culture. I’m very close to that childhood dream, and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to say that.

Any advice for someone looking to break into product management?

Product and tech are evolving fast—and so are the roles within them. The lines between product, design, and engineering are blurring more than ever, and it’s such an exciting time to jump in.

My biggest advice? Stay curious. Listen deeply. Learn how to break down complex situations into clear problems and desired outcomes. If you can do that—and keep people at the center of the process—you’re already thinking like a product manager.

It’s also essential to stay positive and intentional. PMs are pulled in a lot of directions—endless meetings, urgent requests, shifting priorities. To thrive, you need strong soft skills, good boundaries, and comfort with ambiguity. The magic happens when you can cut through the noise and focus with precision on what matters most.

If you’re just getting started, look for a specific, solvable problem you care about—something a lot of people struggle with but that hasn’t been solved well. Use AI tools to explore solutions, build a prototype, and get feedback. Not only will it give you something meaningful for your portfolio, but it’ll also be fun if it’s a problem you genuinely want to improve.

In the end, great product management is about creating so much value in the problem space that people not only want to use what you’ve built, but they won’t be able to imagine how they did without it in the first place. When you do that well, the business success will follow.

Lastly, what’s one fun or unexpected fact about you that might surprise people?

I have a small but mighty VHS collection of experimental art films and Time-based-media pieces that I love curating in my home office. It’s my own mini-gallery—part installation, part inspiration. I’ll often have one looping in the background while I work, letting the visuals and soundscapes shape the atmosphere.

On sunny Sunday afternoons, you’ll usually find me outside with my loved ones listening to Dorothy Ashby’s Afro-Harping (1968) while my son chases giant bubbles across the yard. It’s one of those simple, grounding rituals that reminds me what all the work is for.

Milo at home with family.

With a unique blend of artistic sensibility, technical expertise, and deep respect for the cultural heritage sector, Milo exemplifies how thoughtful, community-driven innovation can transform the way museums manage and share their collections. Their passion for empowering museum professionals shines through every aspect of their work, from shaping the future of TMS Collections to fostering inclusive, user-centered design. As the field continues to navigate rapid technological change, Milo’s insights serve as a reminder that lasting impact comes from staying curious, listening deeply, and building tools that honor both the past and the future of cultural stewardship.

To learn more about how Gallery Systems can support your institution’s collections management journey, or to discuss how our solutions can meet your specific needs, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to hear from you.